Jim Linderman blog about surface, wear, form and authenticity in art, antiques and photography. Dull tool and dim bulb were the only swear words my father ever used. Items from the Jim Linderman collection of vernacular photography, folk art, ephemera and curiosities. (Note: if anyone believes an image contained violates their rights or insults their intelligence, simply point it out and I will remove)

Quote and Credit

One Man Band! This circa 1890 enterprising inventor in the top three photographs could do it all...and presumably without electricity! I can't tell if his fly is down, but he is certainly playing with everything else. What a contraption. Other famous one man bands you may or may not know? Dave Grohl, who did the entire first album by Foo Fighters, Sir Paul, who did it without the other moptops, and MY personal favorite Jesse Fuller, a blues man who played the "footdella" for the bass while busking on street corners. Fate Norris of the Skillet Lickers did the same but added bells.

I used to see Sterling Magee play on 125th Street in Harlem. No, not the Apollo...the STREET. Mr. Magee, also known as Satan from "Satan and Adam" a salt and pepper blues duo, had a regular gig worth taking the A-train for. Satan was once called "The Fastest Guitar Player in the World" and he might have been, but his amp was so cheap it all came out like one glorious distorted note. He used a foot operated drum and cymbal thing while plugged into a lamppost near the Studio Museum of Harlem.

Satan also made art, and I spent a day in his apartment while he showed me his trippy, cosmic, Sun Ra holograms made out of plywood and such. Sorta like primitive Rubic's cube toys but shaped like stars and each with their own particular logic only Mr. Satan could interpret. I went with a friend, he later told me that was the longest afternoon in his life. I wasn't surprised to learn he had a nervous breakdown not long after, but what DID surprise me was the extent of his Wikipedia entry! He never told me he played with a transvestite duo known as "The Illusions That Create Confusion" but he did mention James Brown and King Curtis, both which were true. He also made a few early singles and with Adam, a few LP records but they gave him a better amplifier. Too bad. He sounded great with the one he carried on a modified shopping cart. I don't think this fellow had as much soul, but I'd have taken the subway up to see him play too.

The Painted Backdrop takes a whole new look at the relationship between painters and photographers in the 19th century. Is it true the camera replaced the brush? Maybe they got along far better than we've always thought. The SIXTH book published by Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books, catalog HERE.

Lethal Dose is a mind-bent chunk of REALLY good hair, acceleration, rock and roll, napalm-hot dames, clips from far underneath the underbelly and a dizzying work of genius/love. Think every influence Lux Interior had crammed into a two minute dream and add a trucker's sized dinner of Nodoz. If you live within the metropolitan New York City area, think WFMU and the Hound on a loud distorted speaker. Then add some color. Really bright ones. So I was thrilled to see the linked review of Camera Club Girls HERE.

Tony Fitzpatrick is one of the most amazing people I have ever met but do not know. I'm GLAD I don't know him. You see, Tony came to my house to visit over 15 years ago shortly after I had stopped drinking. Mr. Fitzpatrick was an artist and a damn good one, he still is. After ten years drunk I was a recently sober art collector. Tony won't remember this, he'll barely remember me...but at that time, after confessing I was sober for the first time in forever, he asked me the question of four secret words exchanged between alcoholics. I said no, that I was doing it myself. Tony, after having only met me for the first time. looked me right in my eyes with his...his clear, powerful, serious eyes which only artists have, and said "If you ever feel like a drink again, you call me first."

I have never had to.

Memory is an amazing and curious thing. All of us go through our lives with hardly a thought about how we affect others. What to us might be a flippant comment, a friendly greeting, an abusive finger...could well stay with someone for years. It could stay with them forever. I guess it has to do with timing and chemicals.

I could write a biography of Tony Fitzpatrick here with the standard sources, but he and others have done it for me. Suffice to say, he is a father, an artist, a blunt former pug and poet, a tough mother for ya, one of the brightest lights in Chicago and one of the most honest people I have met but never knew. However, like most of my friends, I knew he was there the whole time, and that is what mattered.Today Tony and I are a few tentacles away from each other on Facebook. I haven't written him, he hasn't written me. But I know he is there. Still.

The images cribbed here are early work I can only assume are now owned by fortunate and proud collectors, if any want the images removed let me know. There is already a solid 25 years of good work behind Mr. Fitzpatrick and I could find more. Tony has done other work you have seen, most of Steve Earle's CD covers feature one of his works, as have others. He exhibits frequently at prominent galleries and his work is owned by prominent museums. His website is HERE

Available NOW! The Painted Backdrop: Behind the Sitter in American Tintype PhotographyThe previously untold story of 19th century painters and their influence on American photography during the tintype era. Never before examined in detail, the book contains over 75 rare, unpublished original tintype photographs from the Jim Linderman collection. A Grammy nominated writer and collector who has been called "the perfect subject for a Harvey Pekar comic" this book is informed with Linderman's wit and continues his examination of previously overlooked art and photography subjects. 80 Pages, 8' x 10" with essays by Jim Linderman and Kate Bloomquist. Linderman's most recent photography book was Camera Club Girls which tells the story of the amateur photographers who met to take nude photographs during the 1950s, discovered model Bettie Page, and started a revolution in erotic art...all through the work of one never before published artist.

We just "celebrated" the 30th anniversary of a killer tornado here in Michigan, the Kalamazoo doozy in which four folks lost their lives. The entire downtown area was destroyed, and I lived through it. It was the last house I lived in before moving to NYC, and I'll always remember sitting on the porch, drinking beer, ignoring warning sirens, and watching a poor soul drive up to the house on four flat tires, his arm covered in blood, to say "I just drove through a tornado" while shaking his head and trying to clear his ears. We didn't hear the typical "train sound" so often used by survivors, but the path was less than a mile away.

I was expecting this group of five disaster photos to be more evidence of a tornado. Lo and behold one has a barely legible note on the reverse which reads "Explosion at old Gilmore house" and sure enough...the offending stove is shown in one photo. Since these photos pre-date meth labs by a good hundred years, I am going to blame a gas line and hope no one was home. These would typically be called "exterior" and "interior" photographs, but the explosion has blurred those distinctions considerably.

There are many beautiful and delicate things in the world. but among the most beautiful and delicate are the 19th century Japanese Crepe Paper books produced by Tikejiro Hasegawa. They hardly weigh a thing, which likely helped ship and carry them to the United States back in 1885 when they were first being made. While they are in fact extraordinary Japanese traditional woodcuts prints, each page done by hand, they were produced largely for the western market as souvenirs, but more. Seldom has such attention been paid to mere exports, and I suspect not only the extremely high artistic standards of the artist, but the desire to share same with the rest of the world was just as important as profit.Takejiro Hasegawa was born in 1853 and lived until 1938, thus just missing the Second World War. The books were printed in quite small editions, some 400 copies, so are quite scarce and highly prized today. He first intended the books to help educate Japanese children in the speaking of English, but as they caught on with travelers he had found his true market. Despite being (almost) strong enough to withstand children's play, the "Chirimen bon" crepe paper he printed on was light as a feather. These selected images are from but a few in the 66 page book "Japanese Jingles" from 1891 which I proudly own. The books were in fact printed on crepe...a light as air paper fabric...hand sewn and bound. Mine is 5" x 6" in size and nearly an inch thick. The entire book is reproduced HERE.

Japanese Jingles: Being a Few Little Verses... by Mae St. john Bramhall, Published T. Hasegawa 1891 Collection Jim Linderman

I have learned after many years never to say a certain type of music sucks...because I always find myself later studying it and loving it. It happened with jazz...HATED it, then discovered Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. It happened with Country...HATED it, then the appreciation of it literally filled my life. Blues? The same three chords...then I discovered Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters and that deep, rich, well of music which has sustained me for a lifetime. Gospel? Please...now I love it and have barely scratched (pun intended) the surface.

But you know? I don't think I'll EVER get into these guys. Hey, wait a minute! Dan Russo and his Orioles Orchestra recorded a song titled "Taint No Sin (To Take Off Your Skin And Dance Around In Your Bones)" Maybe I should just give a listen...

Do you Tumblr? I do. HERE. I use it to try out ideas for my blogs, for the instant feedback, for the way selected images reveal much about the folks who post them, for the inspiration and mostly as a way to generate interest in my own particular taste. More than anything, I use it to promote my books. It doesn't work, as most of my fellow tumblrs seem to be as broke as me, and besides are young and I doubt they even read books much. No insult, just that they are visual, busy, involved and living their lives, but they are also, at least my followers, extremely intelligent, artistic and many with curatorial skills which would match those of the professionals.

It is a very intimate and personal forum...nothing reveals more about a person than the visual images they love and select to share. Graphics, Art, Homemade art, Photographs they have collected OR taken, some stolen from others. It is a frontier for photos. For the most part, I consider my tumblr posts outtakes. B-sides. Things I have or have found which I believe deserve sharing, but not necessarily interesting enough for me to ponder for long...but I've been convinced otherwise on occasion.

The beauty of Tumblr is that others indicate their interest or appreciation of the image by voting, by forwarding it or by responding in some way. The genius of tumblr is the instant reinforcement for your own taste. A community builds...my community probably says more about me than them, but the misfits who follow me, most of them anonymous, have my support. If they post an image which offends me (and some frequently do) I "unfollow" them. If one of my posts receives a plethora of approvals, I'll consider expanding it and put it on a blog. Above is a selection of my recent posts on Tumblr. You can follow too if you like. Many duplicate (or lead to) posts on what I consider my REAL blogs. But if you like pictures without my blathering, this could be the place for you.

Group of anonymous photographs from the collection of Jim LindermanAll Tumbled at some time.

Prostitutes, knives, sexual abuse, mental illness, suicide, alcoholism, attempted murder, wife-beating and an ill-fated decision to sell the rights to his songs to the crooked preacher Charles Jessup HERE) all add up to one damn good reason to BUY A CD instead of downloading some songs.

I swear, there is no way a tiny digital impulse which costs 99 cents and hurts your ears because the sound is so bad can even BEGIN to compare with a real CD and a real BOOK of liner notes, and the Jimmy Donley CD from the incredible Bear Records label in Germany is not the only reason, but it is a good one.

I can't even do justice to the disc, the liner notes, or the simply hard to believe story which unfolds as you listen. Suffice to say if you still own a CD player, this belongs. I've been a big fan of Swamp Pop for a long time, it is one of the last vestiges of a music junkie, and it has been on my mind even more since British Petroleum broke the Gulf with misguided greed and a rush to profit.

Swamp Pop comes from the same place now being gobbed with oil, and that the area just to the south of New Orleans has made a musical contribution equal to their cooking should not escape anyone. Like Bobby Charles, who I have also profiled here, Donley got some songs into the hands of Fats Domino, yet another reason to be glad to be alive...and if you know that beat and rhythm, you can begin to understand swamp pop. This would be a good CD for you to start with, and after you have read the simply incredible 40 page story included with the disc, if you don't have second thoughts about all that money you're electronically transferring directly to Apple...then I give up.

FIVE CAJUN STARS *****

Jimmy Donley The Shape You Left Me In Bear Records 2010 1 CD and 42 pages of text. Linked at right. BUY

"Perpetually ahead of the collecting curve...a one man Taschen. An authentically curious individual...diligently archiving the forgotten curiosities of American History"

Emma Higgins in Art Hack May 2012

"Jim Linderman likes Art, Antiques and Photography and his collection of Vernacular Photography, Folk Art, Ephemera and Curiosities is a wonderful place..."LifeElsewhere with Norman B. 2014

"...collected over the years by Jim Linderman, a character who seems the perfect subject for a Harvey Pekar comic. Linderman treats collecting like a calling, and his finds have a resulting air of authority, stunning in their capture of bygone picturesque moments."Derek Taylor Dusted

"The pictures, discarded artifacts of ecstatic Americana, come from the stash of Jim Linderman, who in his introduction recalls advice he’s plainly taken to heart: “Collect the heck” out of whatever you find interesting."Drew Jubera Paste Magazine

"His interest in art is rivaled only by his interest in music, and one expression informs the other. He pursues objects with thoroughness and an innate sense of curiosity..."Tanya Heinrich Folk Art Magazine

"Linderman acknowledges the obscure at the same time that he elevates it.... His collections tell vast stories in sotto voce, allowing curios and objects shadowed by mainstream culture and ideology to converse and be heard. What we hear is an enormous American sub-culture speaking in forbidden, marginalized languages: stuff discovered boxed in the attic out of embarrassment or zealotry, smutty ash trays crowing next to religious pamphlets, each claiming a part of the complex, sometimes contradictory, always conflicted American imagination, a chaos of memories that will one day vanish."Joe Bonomo Author of Conversations With Greil Marcus, Jerry Lewis Lost and Found and No Such Thing As Was

"Documenting--one clipping at a time--the scrapbook of a leg and garter aficionado that was dumpster-dived in Virginia in the 60s" "...an outstanding image-archaeologist who has compiled a shelf-ful of worthy and unique photographic histories."William Smith Hang Fire Books

"Linderman has a knack for discovering untold stories and introducing them to a wider audience"Joey Lin Anonymous Works

"Jim Linderman...makes us all look a little puny"Could it be Madness-this?

"...there's something beyond the endless photos and postcards and weird propaganda from another time that he lovingly documents - I think it's the collection as a whole, the portrait of a person fascinated with culture and communication. I have met people like this before, and in reading Dull Tool Dim Bulb I feel I have been lucky enough to meet one more. This site is a goldmine in terms of links..."The Hyggelic Life October 2009

"Linderman is always on the lookout for the new and exciting"Chuck and Jan Rosenak Contemporary American Folk Art

"...an amazing collection..."Revel in New York October 2009

"Jim Linderman has a nice little colllection of interesting books and blogs...But every so often he just loses it."American Digest March 2010

"FOR MOST OF HIS LIFE, COLLECTOR JIM LINDERMAN has searched high and low for authentic things--unique and special objects that define the artistic culture of the American experience. From folk art to popular culture, from pulp fiction to Delta Blues-- Jim is a walking authority on so many things American they are too numerous to mention. One thing is certain-- his collecting interests are for things that have fallen through the cracks, those things lost and forgotten--the box of material under the table at the flea market booth. If it wasn't for dedicated collectors like Jim Linderman-- so many important objects about our culture would have surely been lost to time and indifference."

"Jim Linderman maintains a most interesting blog about the most amazing things from his collection—a site he calls “Dull Tool Dim Bulb,” the only curse words his father ever uttered. I love it, and read it everyday.""...an excellent writer and I devour your blog daily. I am impressed at your deep knowledge of things within your niche..."John Foster Accidental Mysteries

"I am grateful to Jim Linderman for first alerting me to the existence of the 1930s Spiritualist hymn "Jesus is My Air-o-plane."William Fagaly New Orleans Museum of Art, Author Tools of her Ministry: The art of Sister Gertrude Morgan

"Linderman describes a long gone world...(he) claims not to be a writer but he is most certainly an excellent researcher..."BOOKSTEVE

"Jim Linderman, King of the Internet Ephemeral Arts"Spaniel Rage

"Jim is a fantastic historian...show him some love"Astrid Daley Fringe Pop / Sin-A-Rama

"Almost an experimental narrative"Idiopath

"He came to us with hundreds of jaw-dropping baptism photos that he'd been collecting for 25 years," Ledbetter explains. "By the time he found us, he'd already done half a lifetime's works, and he trusted us to handle it properly." Lance Ledbetter in Creative Loafing 10/13/11

4. It is not in any way replaceable with an uncopyrighted or freely copyrighted image pertinent to the work referenced in the article

The copyright for some images are most likely owned by either the publisher, the writer(s) and/or artist(s) which produced them originally.

Any other uses of this image may be copyright infringement.

Although most of the images here are original photography and objects owned by the author and in the author's personal collection, we cannot absolutely guarantee the exact copyright status of the items or offer written assurance that every or any aspect of this work is completely cleared for all usages. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item.

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If you are the owner of any aspect of an item which you believe to be copyrighted, please contact us immediately at j.winkel4@gmail.com